Hard to take your views about it as anything more than axe grinding at this point.
I’m sure your HS and what you think “everybody” thought is very important. It tempts me to start waxing nostalgic about the nowhere high school I attended in nowhere USA that sent some of its top students to places like Whitman and UPS along with larger places like the University of Washington, which can go toe to toe with anybody as a research powerhouse.
Sure. I imagine perceptions are built over time. I put Midd at the published by @prezbucky tier (not my defined tiers) of Emory, Gtown, USC, NYU, etc. don’t think you are questioning that.
In my mind…and it’s just me - Swat is the creme de la creme. But I realize Williams and Amherst are recognized at the top.
Midd is regularly 10-15 in the LAC ranks I see and in some rankings lower. Niche 13 etc. in one study…may have been one of these in past years…it was 17 or 20. In the WSJ it’s #40. Amherst and Williams are 22-23 as the top and Midd is 11th of the LACs.
Swatt has an 8% admission. Midd 13%.
Swatt has more test takers as a percentage and higher scores.
I think over time perceptions are often made by what you read or data you discover.
Certainly it’s a great school and no doubt kids attend who get into ‘higher ranked’ like at most other schools.
I simply played a game someone started and these were my thoughts. But it didn’t mean I agreed with the buckets to begin with.
Btw if u went by WSJ rank since they include all schools in one study, the other LACs would be tiered lower than my ‘perceptions’ placed them.
Just perception. My current and past bosses went to schools never even mention on CC and my schools both get somewhat regular mentions. Where you go matters for your experience but in the end winners (and bums) are coming from all over.
No axe to grind. Personally, I don’t see value in LACs. They are the same cost as the elite privates, but have nowhere near the opportunities. Doesn’t make sense to me, but we should just agree to disagree…
The are the same cost as most privates, period, not just elites. There are many less resourced privates with poorer reps that cost as much or more.
In terms of opportunities, putting aside the top 5-10-ish elite privates with massive endowments per students and outsized reputations, I would argue they have more resources and opportunities than most large public or privates. More opportunities for paid and published undergraduate research, more individual attention from the school for getting internships, externships, coops, etc. Major picky employers are just as happy to see a Williams student as they are to see one from Brown or Dartmouth or Cornell, let alone most other private schools. And they tend to matriculate to top grad programs at a rate equal or better than most non-LAC’s. So what exactly is your basis for the “less opportunities”?
We live in flyover land where the average person knows of the state universities, the football and basketball powerhouses, and HYPSM. Very few are aware of the LACs other than the families with kids shooting for high academic schools. But that does not mean LACs don’t offer great opportunities or are a better fit for some students. @citivas listed several. Also for kids who prefer a more intimate campus and class size, a LAC is going to be a much better fit. For kids who want a big college, especially a bigtime sports, social environment, a LAC is not for them.
Same at UW – huge lecture, small weekly discussion (and/or lab…).
I keep LACs and Universities separate when I evaluate/rank them. I realize I left out Boston College, so I’ll go back and fix it. (so I can’t edit it any longer – I’d put them probably in the USC/NYU group or the next one)
Really, you could probably combine the first three tiers and then the next three, because they are likely so close in overall quality…
WRT Texas, I think Texas is a great school, and they are a top-10 public U in my book. They’re just not the only great public U spending a ton on research and possessing a ton of resources.
New day, new post, and you’re still not coming across as very erudite to me.
So, opportunities for what? You mentioned that LACs would always play second fiddle to “major research universities”, but now you’re pivoting to a cohort of (1) a small subset of those universities and (2) elite private colleges that include schools that simply are not “major research universities.” I expect a guy like you probably knows that schools like Washington, Wisconsin, at least 6 of the UCs, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, Rutgers, Texas, and Minnesota are big, big players in the research game. I didn’t see any of those schools on your high school’s list of preferred destinations. I’m sure you know this, but schools like Princeton (67), Dartmouth (79) and Brown (96; where I have a kid) are well below schools like Ohio State and Arizona, and are not even close to schools like Michigan, Washington or UCSD (top 6), in terms of research spending (a decent proxy for research activity I’d say). Harvard itself is below 8 schools, which includes Wisconsin and Washington, and only one other Ivy (Penn).
Do you think Georgetown and Rice are anywhere in the zip code of research activity as Wisconsin or Texas A&M? Would the former two schools have no value relative to the latter two? I’m just trying to understand what you’re trying to say here.
One thing very erudite people seem to be able to do in my experience is listen well and display mental flexibility and assimilate new views or refine currently held beliefs. They also tend to be less absolute and black & white in their thinking. My mother’s cousin is a world-class physicist who obtained his PhD at Chicago when he was 21. A real prodigy, this guy and very well known in those circles. He left Harvard where he was amongst the youngest ever tenured there to head up the department at a large research univ I’m sure kids at your HS would not want to attend. I asked him long ago where I should send my kids to school, and it was in that conversation that I first discovered what a LAC could offer. He said he liked that model a lot and noted that in his own experience running a physics department that Carleton has sent his way many talented students, and so he tended to notice that name when reviewing applications. My Wesleyan kid is now in a graduate math program at a school I’m sure you’d value and she is doing very well. I don’t know, maybe these goofy little schools that didn’t grow up have something to offer. I’ll defer to the more erudite amongst us on that conclusion.
Despite this article trying to show some kind of “balance” on not focusing as much on the top 10 or 20 schools, it still perpetuates the cycle of the rankings’ importance. They quote a student at Thomas Jefferson High School who’s thinking about Carnegie Mellon (#22) but also “sees some local options as possibilities”, namely UVA at #25 and Virginia Tech at #62. There was also an in-state resident who was embarrassed she couldn’t get admitted to Michigan (#25) and had to go to Michigan State (#77). 
So much for any school that’s not in the top 100…
(This is a link that anybody should be able to use, regardless of their subscription status or number of NY Times articles they have viewed this month.)
I agree. But it’s interesting that your perceptions seem to be based heavily on rankings and, it appears, admission rates. I say that’s interesting because my general impression of your view is that those things don’t really matter. Anyway, as you say, Middlebury will be just fine without us. 
Certainly is important to this school.
Just because people disagree with you and are independent thinkers does not mean they are not erudite. But this conversation is clearly not “life or death,” and in that case the civilized thing is for the parties to agree to disagree.
My kid chose Charleston over wash & Lee. In her case rank or admit rate doesn’t matter.
My son same with Bama over Purdue for engineering. And so have over 1k national merit finalists.
So admit rates and rank, to them, don’t matter. I’m not in school but I chose by rank and today would choose by rank and cost.
Let’s be honest none of us truly knows about most these schools on a first hand basis.
I will be walking the Bowdoin forest loop and hopefully campus tomorrow morning tho ….excited.
I do think many are influenced by rank.
You hear of few wanting to go to St. Angelo or Tarletan State. But a Tom wanting to go to UT or A&M, etc.
That comes from rank in large part.
But you put a gun to my head. I’d put Midd with W&L and Davidson and it will be heresy to some but ahead of Wes, Vassar and Colby.
I also think Dan Fouts was the best QB I’ve ever seen. Most don’t rank him top 10.
Everyone has an opinion. There is nothing absolute.
Lol. Of course, nobody said any such thing. But a good red herring nonetheless.
Independent thinkers can substantiate their views. A monkey can just throw up words and say “it’s my opinion; let’s agree to disagree.”
Anyway, I just see no value in your opinions; they don’t make sense to me.
I can substantiate them (my data in part is alumni interview experiences for one of the tippy tops): the top kids are not gunning for LACs. If somebody wants to dispute that, I’m all ears…
Perhaps the 2 users above can agree to disagree and move the conversation forward
I’m not sure I follow all that, but let’s take it as stipulated that people have opinions and that they’re entitled to them. My opinion is that some opinions are much better than others. For example, some people know a lot about many (of course not all) of these schools because they’ve invested the time, while others prefer to extemporise. And, it also goes w/o saying that we’re all free to do that too.
I’d also hazard a guess (opinion) that a great many students attend UT or A&M not because of rank, but rather because of resources, location, excellence in one or more particular areas of study, and, of course, cost.
Deleted.
I think the renewal notice I received said $40.
UPDATE: Online renewal says $39.95 - don’t know if there’s a renew vs new subscription difference.
I have Fouts in my top 10 – so much like Marino, just not quite as good.
Check out the Antarctica museum at Bowdoin. It’s on the big flat quad at one end, in the “college main” – or what I initially thought to be the college main when I first got there.